Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is something that almost everyone has done at once or another. For a few folks it’s probably something they do too often. I guess for me personally, the bad buying habit is junk food. If I had spent my extra cash on instant lottery tickets over time, I may have been rich by now rather than overweight. Like anything, be it food or gambling one should do it in moderation, which is often not easy to accomplish.
Here in hawaii of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket arrived in 1975, and they have been a large hit every since.
I’ve bought instant lottery tickets of each available price range in my own state. I usually buy the $1 – $2 tickets, but from time to time I purchase a $5 – $10 ticket, and something time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not even $1 or a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing away my $20. lottery sambad would believe that with having to spend that much money, they might give everyone at least a FREE $1 ticket or something. I thought afterwards that I was sort of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on one ticket, but heck as they say, “If you don’t play, you can’t win !”, it had been a gamble, and I didn’t win that point. I’ve known two individuals who each won near $20,000 on instant lottery tickets. THEREFORE I can say for sure, “yes, some folks do win it big.”
Unlike the live lottery that is usually drawn by picking numbers, the instant lottery is pre-determined months before it’s release. The tickets were created and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers through the entire state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, and also the large chain stores. It is possible to usually find them in a vending machine with multiple styles and price ranges to choose from, or they are at the cashiers area on the counter or behind a shielded section. Instant lottery tickets sell for only $1 so when high as $20 each in most states of the U.S. but some states may have tickets that sell for a lot more than $20 each.
States do instant lotteries to greatly help fund many different programs. For example in Pennsylvania, the lottery is used to generate funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth’s older residents. In Ohio, since 1974, the Lottery has provided more than $13 billion to public education. Annually, the lottery provides about 4.5 percent of the funding needed for Ohio’s public education. In Missouri, approximately 27.3 cents of every dollar spent on the Lottery benefits education programs; 61.6 cents dates back to players as prizes, 5 cents is used for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers by means of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of each dollar stays in Missouri. It’s different for every state, but the lottery is quite beneficial despite the few problems it could cause to some, by means of gambling addictions.
Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and when they don’t win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know that each time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket in the trash, you’re throwing money away ? Yes, you can find literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the world that would love to purchase your tickets from you. I’ve seen losing lottery tickets sell for as high as $15 each, we were holding tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to an area convenience store and asked them easily may have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw they had on to the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two which were $1 winners that were not redeemed, and I sold the rest of the losing tickets for $30, and the store was just going to throw them away.
Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to look one day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets on the market on the eBay auction website. There are folks selling non-winning, so called ‘worthless’ lottery tickets on eBay constantly. I just did a search now while writing this short article, and I found over 100 different auction listings for them. Who buys these non-winning lottery tickets ? Collectors.
Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast learning to be a big thing. There are groups and individuals all around the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are several websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. Actually there is even a new term or name for an instantaneous lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the instant lottery ticket collecting hobby is named: LOTOLOGY. To see how big this hobby is now just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and execute a seek out: lotologist OR lotology. And you may find many sites collecting, buying and selling used non-winning instant lottery tickets.